Only one of three trucks is leaving Romania nowadays. The causes include cheap exports and the exceeding fleet. There is a high number of bankruptcies expected for the following years.

Romanian truck owners find supply to transport for an average of one in three trucks, the situation being different from country to country – as shown in the data supplied by Marilena Matei, general manager of Trafic Media, the owner of Tranzit si logistica magazine.
Acvording to the data presented by Marilena Matei, in case of trucks leaving Romania, the degree of their loading is of 19%, and at their return, of 53%.

The situation is more difficult in case of transports towards Czech Republic, where, just 3% of the trucks leave fully loaded or those towards Austria, where the percentage is of 6%. And this due to the fact that the carriers are least affected if they travel to short distance destinations without freight. The easiest is to find orders towards Italy (32% of the fully loaded trucks) and Bulgaria, where the percentage is of 62%. When returning from these countries, the situation is positive as concerning Czech Republic, country from where trucks return 82% fully loaded, and Austria, where the percentage of fully loaded trucks returning is 54%.
There are many factors explaining this situation, as mentioned by officials of Romanian road transport industry.  First, there is the fleet that exceeded in trucks during the period between 2006-2007, says Ioan Lixandru, vicepresident of UNTRR.

„The fleet increased during 2006-2007, but now we are in the middle of a crisis and the supply does not move anymore. We still don’t know about the decreses in transport after August”, says Ioan Lixandru. To cover their expenses, road transporters must gamble not so much on what they would transport towards west, because the supply we axport towards that area are cheep, but on what they would bring back. The value of the supply brought back to Romania is much higher than the value of the supply sent. The situation has worsen during recent years. „If a few years ago a carrier had covered its expenses in a percentage of 30% from export transports and 70% from import transports, now, the percentage is of 20% with 80%.

“Bankruptcy is the only solution”, answers Ioan Lixandru to the question: “What would happen in the future?”. “Only medium sized companies will resist, the small and the big companies being the most affected”, he added.  There simply will be a moment when transport companies will say to leasing companies ”take back our trucks, we cannot pay for them anymore”.